I Am an Escapist by Clara Baisinger-Rosen

I have a playlist on my Spotify. It’s filled with songs from the folksy banjos of the Secret Sisters to the dreamy, airlike voice of Aurora. It has stories of magic and fairies told in song form, and it has songs detailing every aspect of romance. But there’s one thing that they all have in common, and that is their purpose for me, as laid out clearly in the title… Escapism. A practice that I’ve gotten into recently has been turning off all my lights save for a few glowy fairy-esque ones, lying on the floor, closing my eyes, and listening to the smooth voice of Lord Huron emanating from the turning record above me. I know the sound isn’t much better than if I just stuck earbuds in my ears, but the ritual causes me to imagine I’m some dark academia girl living in a twentieth-century fantasy. Another form of my Escapism. When it gets warm enough, as it has in the turning of the month of March, I walk outside and go in circles for hours, breathing in the softening air coming between winter and spring. Sometimes I have music, sometimes I don’t, but there’s some part of me that hopes that if I walk for long enough, a fairy will apprehend me and take me to her magical realm as described in the books I read with a passion. I write, too, obviously, stories of extraordinary people who I like to think I am similar to. It’s all just a manifestation of my growing Escapism. I do not live an exciting life. I wake up in the morning, go to school for hours on end and listen to teachers complain about my turned-off camera, then do the exact same thing tomorrow. And the day after that. And the day after that. I sit in one room, thinking about the tests I have to take, the friendships I want to maintain, the homework that for some reason will define whether or not I make it into the college I want. I’m antisocial, so I don’t know how to talk with those I don’t nurture an extremely close bond with. I lose those who are more social than I to other friend groups, other, more exciting, opportunities. I’m ghosted and I’m alone and I’m burnt out so pardon my Escapism. I wonder what will happen when I return to school. Will I know how to face the realities of the actual world I live in? A world in which a girl who doesn’t spread her wings won't nevertheless be found irresistible simply for her “otherness?” A world in which my all-encompassing future must dictate my every move, every activity, every interest? A world in which, simply put, I am not special? So I lay on my floor falling asleep to my records, I listen to my Spotify playlist, I walk in circles. I pretend I am utterly unique in a world in which I’m told everyone is like me and I just don’t know it. That, or that I am right, I am different, and I need to change it immediately. I don’t know when this will end, but until then, I will fall deeper and deeper into my Escapism until there is nothing left of me but childish fantasy.